Not In Our Budget
by Agent Midnight
Summary: Get-Backers fic. (Not crossover). first GB fic, nothing serious. ficlet.


Amano Ginji let out a huge puff of air as the silent screaming of his blank paper continued to drone on and on through his head. The red colored pencil hanging between his fingers once again moved down to tap softly against the tabletop, leaving a small smudge that he would see later and do everything but lick it to clean it off before Wan Paul saw it and stabbed him with a steak knife. Midou Ban stood at the counter, holding a stack of already finished promotion papers, shuffling through each with a critical gaze.  
  
"Oi, Ban-chan?"  
  
"Nani?"  
  
"Maybe we should invest in Paul's computer for the day and print some flyers out."  
  
"No."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Not in our budget."  
  
Ginji let out another sigh, turning to face his partner and immaturely sticking his tongue out at his friend's back. He was unprepared for the blueberry muffin to leave his friend's hands and smack him square against the cheek. His eyes followed the track of the muffin as it bounced off his chest to land on the spotless linoleum floor. Ban waited for Ginji's head to jerk up before he winked behind his sunglasses and went back to shuffling. It only took the blonde a few seconds before he bent down and snagged the muffin off of the floor and chunked it right back, snickering as the food item bounced off the brown fuzz of hair and tumbled onto the counter.  
  
"Not in our budget, Ban-chan."  
  
Ban's small smile did not go unnoticed, and neither did the slight rolling of two dark eyes. Ginji let out a quiet laugh and stood up, throwing his arms above his head in a languid stretch. Strolling to his quiet friend, he wrapped his arm around Ban's shoulders and stared down at their completed masterpeices. His mind kindly laughed back at him and corrected that with such ease that Ginji nearly told himself to shut up.  
  
The red scribbled on the blank sheets of paper looked like a piece of artwork completed by a three-year-old pre-schooler, and it took him a while to admit that he had absolutely no creativity when it came to making signs for their company. After a couple of long, quiet moments, he realized that Ban was looking at him out of the corner of his eye, that small smirk creeping back to his features.  
  
"Nani~?"  
  
"Ginji."  
  
The soft word was almost forced through a tight-lipped smile, allowing no emotion to grace its corners. And the instant Ban did that, Ginji knew that he had open space to justify himself before his friend dropped to the floor and started to laugh. Removing his arm and straightening up in a pose that could have been digified, Ginji returned the tight-lipped smile and shrugged.  
  
"I can't help it that my skills aren't understood."  
  
The flood let loose.  
  
Ban tried to stop his fingers from opening as laughter forced itself out of his lips, filling the quiet bar with sound, and nearly choked on air as he failed. All of Ginji's low-scale flyers scattered down to decorate the floor with white leaves of paper. The red scribbles that screamed their names and their business were hard to read, and Ban had had to read Ginji's writing for what seemed like years.  
  
"Ban-chan!"  
  
Ginji made a wild leap to catch the stack before they could have left his friend's fingers, but settled for watching his work go down the drain by spreading themselves out of order. It never occured to him that the flyers would have been taken out of order in the first place, but emotion got the best of him.  
  
"You make the flyers then!"  
  
Ginji snarled, grabbed the muffin and took a bite out of it.  
  
They froze.  
  
Ban looked at the muffin, first thinking of how that had not only touched his head, but also the floor, and then his thoughts drifted in another direction. His eyes lifted upwards towards the chalkboard on the other side of the counter, reading the handwritten food items and their prices. He followed the white line until-  
  
"$1.15!? We don't have that kind of money!"  
  
Ginji shot his eyes to the menu, and nearly dropped the muffin again.  
  
"That's a rip-off! Paul's ripping people off! That's a ri-"  
  
"Okay, okay, Gin. Point taken."  
  
"I've got a plan."  
  
With a leap, Ginji slid across the counter and ran back into the kitchen area, searching. His companion just leaned back against the counter and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, feeling the persistent tug of a headache forming at his temples. After lighting up his cigarette, he turned back around when the sliding doors flung open and his partner in crime sprung through, holding an object that looked suspiciously like his cigarette. He caught his tongue before he could question as he watched his friend clamber up onto the counter and lean himself towards the menu.  
  
The $1.15 was roughly wiped off, and Ginji replaced it with 15 cents. Turning towards Ban, he saw the slow shaking of the head and changed it to forty-five cents.   
  
No.  
  
"Well, dammit, Ban-chan... what?"  
  
"Fifteen's too low. Forty-five's too high. How about a quarter?"  
  
"Do we got that?"  
  
Ban searched his pockets and found a ball of lint, a couple of tickets, the keys of his Lady Bug, a ball of paper that they could have used for another sign, and a penny. Ginji cursed and gave himself a once-over, sighing in defeat as he came back with two pennies and a chunk of yarn.  
  
They slapped the three pennies on the counter, left two promotional signs, and ran from Honky Tonk. Ban locked the place up before sprinting towards his car, Ginji at his heels. As they rounded the corner where the Lady Bug was parked, they froze yet again as they saw the empty space where the car used to be.  
  
"Fuck, Ban-chan!" 


End file.
